AUSTRALIANS AT WAR

THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY is a compelling factual history of neoconservatism and its influence on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Click on image above for details.

Boot arrogantly seems to think that the Libyan people will not be able to look after their own affairs after they have ousted Gaddafi. Of course, his real concerns are far more about keeping Islamists out of power and ensuring that Libya’s resources don’t fall into the ‘wrong’ hands, i.e., China and/or Russia, than any concern for the future of the Libyan people.

One wonders why Boot didn’t suggest the same for a post-Mubarak Egypt or Tunisia though I’m sure he will if it looks like the Yemen dictator is ousted. And how about Syria?

So far, ‘Mad’ Max is on his own among neocons with this ridiculous idea, but for how long?

Just as Hitler absorbed Austria into the Third Reich in March 1938 as part of his quest to create a Greater Germany, so Israel absorbed the Golan Heights into Greater Israel in 1981, a move condemned by the United Nations Security Council (Resolution 497).

After Austria, Hitler turned his attention to the Sudetenland, a region of Czechoslovakia where a large pocket of ethnic Germans lived. Hitler threatened to march into the Sudetenland and then threatened to go to war with Czechoslovakia if they resisted his move into the Sudetenland. A crisis loomed between Germany and Britain and France but, realising they were in no position to go to war, Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flew to Germany for face to face talks with Hitler to defuse the situation. The result of these talks and with others and after much resistance from France and even his own cabinet, was that Chamberlain agreed to Hitler annexing the Sudetenland on the condition that Hitler provided assurances that there would be no further territorial claims. Neville Chamberlain was forever after accused of ‘appeasing’ Hitler.

In 2011 President Obama said that peace talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis should be based on borders between Israel and the Palestinian territories that existed before the 1967 war. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was outraged and refused point blank to have any discussions with anyone that revolved around the pre-1967 borders. Obama backed off saying his suggestion about the 1967 borders was meant really only as a starting point for discussions and qualified himself by saying there would be territorial trade-offs to finalise borders. Then the question of Israeli settlements inside the West Bank came up. Netanyahu cleverly hinted that there was a possibility that some settlements could be discussed knowing full well, however, that there would be no discussions anyway because of Hamas’s involvement with Fatah and the Palestinians insistence on a right of return of the refugees to Israel and East Jerusalem becoming the Palestinian capital. Obama has conceded to Netanyahu’s demands that the 1967 borders are effectively not included in any discussions – if, indeed, there are ever likely to be any – nor any of the other Palestinian demands.

Netanyahu has made it quite clear with the assertions he has made about ‘talks’ that there will never ever be a Palestinian state while he has anything to do with it and that, therefore, the Israeli settlements are there to stay and so will likely become annexed to become part of a Greater Israel.

Obama has shown his true colours. He will appease the Zionists of Israel in the face of a world that will ultimately condemn Israel and the US for appeasing them.

The US and its hanger-on allies are rapidly becoming irrelevant states as most of the world goes ahead and supports the creation of a Palestinian state – with or without UN support and with or without the support of the US who have become the true appeasers of the twenty-first century.

Friday, May 27, 2011

As it slowly disappears into a financial black hole of debt from which its ordinary citizens are never likely to recover and the only source of power it has left falls from an aircraft and comes out of the end of a gun, the United States is steadily losing relevancy as an influential power on our planet.

The last ten years have seen the steady erosion of virtually all of its credibility as a ‘super-power’ as its actions have exposed the reality of American values; gross hypocrisy and utter self-righteous arrogance.

As its President struts his stuff around the planet in a fruitless effort to regain lost credence, the rest of the world looks toward itself to find a future. Come September, the Palestinian people will more than likely ask the international community through the United Nations to recognise a Palestinian state. The US president has arrogantly told the world that a Palestinian state will not be created this way meaning that the US will veto such a resolution at the UN Security Council. Right now Obama is lobbying European leaders on behalf of Israel asking the Europeans not to support Palestinian statehood. How successful his lobbying will be remains to be seen, but just the fact that the President of the United States has been reduced to lobbying on behalf of a foreign state indicates the extent to which American power has been eroded.

On the economic front, China has shown the way. China’s ability to simply trade with the world rather than threaten and invade nations that don’t cooperate has left the US economy staggering on its feet. When China wants something that it doesn’t have itself or needs more of from elsewhere, it doesn’t spend trillions on raising a military to invade; it simply sends an email asking ‘how much and which bank shall we transfer the money in to?’ Most countries – and Australia is a classic example – are then more than happy to dig up the bits of the country that China wants and ship it to them. China has found that its a lot cheaper to send the email, transfer the cash and let their trading partners like Australia do the work rather than have to raise a massive army and launch an invasion just to get at its resources. Those days are long gone for the Chinese; but not, it seems, for the US.

Soon, as China rapidly increases trade with potentially the world’s biggest markets, India, Pakistan and the rest of Asia, it will rely less and less on the need to sell to and trade with the US – especially as the US can’t pay its bills.

On the domestic front, US values have meant that a ‘dog eat dog’ and ‘every man for himself’ mentality has evolved which has resulted in millions not being able to feed themselves without food stamps and millions more not being able to find enough work to keep themselves and their families provided for. Meanwhile, a progressive deterioration in the nation’s economy has seen hundreds of thousands lose their homes while a few at the big end of town have had massive government handouts that they have corruptly squandered on themselves via huge bonuses and salary increases.

Trillions more have been handed over to arms manufacturers, the military and private military support service contractors in order to perpetuate wars against a media-created world-wide ‘terrorist enemy’ while the nations road systems, education, penal systems and health services erode and fail.

All America has left is the threat of using its military power; but, as the Taliban in Afghanistan and the resistance in Iraq and elsewhere have shown, even that has not been enough to subdue a determined people.

America has nothing left to offer the world. The ordinary folk of America are as disillusioned as the rest of the world has been in the past. And they are confused. ‘Why’, they ask, ‘if we are so exceptional, have we nothing left to show for our exceptionalism?’ They have no one to blame but their leaders who have lusted after personal power and wealth. They have fallen trance-like into the grip of a racist extreme right-wing foreign power and their American supporters who have conned them into believing that their interests and America’s are one and the same but who are now exposed as nothing more than criminals that have taken advantage of, and then expended, all of the sympathy that the world had for them at the end of the Second World War.

Now America is paying the price of their folly of supporting Israel. Not only is Israel a lost cause but it has taken America down the road to irrelevancy with it. The world is no longer impressed by what America has to offer. The world now knows that it is a collective world that looks after the interests of each other that is relevant today.

The US is becoming irrelevant. Its only hope now is that the American people rise up and demand an end to wars and an end to their futile support of the right-wing racist government of Israel.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

After the many references to the arch-enemy of Israel and the US during Netanyahu’s recent visit to the US to meet with Obama, address the AIPAC conference and a joint sitting of the US congress, Iran has quietly been moved on to the front burner of Middle East politics and the heat is now gradually being turned up.

The up-front issue of the visit has been the so-called ‘peace process’ between Israel and the Palestinians but always lurking within the narrative of vitriol against the Palestinians generally, and Hamas and Hezbollah particularly, is the role of Iran and its supposed ‘nuclear weapons program’.

Yesterday the neoconservatives upped the ante against Iran when an influential think-tank paper was released relating not to Israel directly, but to Iraq. Entitled ‘Iraq Threat Assessment’ and written by neocon strategist Frederick Kagan, the paper purports to detail the influence Iran has on Iraq and how that influence might spiral after the US ‘leave’ Iraq at the end of the year. In it Kagan argues that, because of the influence that Iran is likely to wield over Iraqi affairs after the US leaves, that the drawdown should be substantially and indefinitely postponed.

There has been, as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency concede, nothing subtle about the way the ‘publics attention has been yanked back to Iran’ after being distracted by the Arab Spring.

Expect the heat on Iran to be turned up even higher as the threat of a unilateral declaration of independence creeps closer and the Palestinian leaders, both Fatah and Hamas, head to the UN in September to ask the rest of the world for the recognition Israel and the US deny them.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Even the most ardent of American Zionists are prepared to admit that other events in the Middle East have over-shadowed the immediate existential nuclear threat that Iran was to Israel and, indeed, the world up to only a few months ago, though I can’t imagine, if such a threat were real, what could possibly have been occurring in the Middle East that would have been more important than an Iran that was apparently only months away from launching a nuclear weapon at Israel. Yet Eric Cantor in a speech delivered to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention yesterday told delegates “Recent developments in the region have moved Iran out of the headlines…”

So there we have it; the reality of the Palestinians wanting to have their lands back and the Arab peoples getting rid of their dictators is what’s really bothering the Zionists and the Western governments. The immediate ‘existential threat’ of a nuclear bomb being lobbed at them doesn’t really seem to be that important enough to be newsworthy anymore.

But then, as the entire world really knows, it never actually was a threat. Its ‘newsworthiness’ at the time had far more to do with propaganda and rhetoric than actual reality. Cantor’s admission belies that reality.

However, the new threat of a world actually recognising a unilaterally declared independent state of Palestine is bringing pressure to bear on the Zionists to find a way out of this predicament – and what better distraction than to resurrect the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon that, again, is an existential threat to Israel’s existence. Hence Cantor’s continuing remarks that went thus: “…but it is undeniable: the spectre of a nuclear Iran looms larger than ever. We must never take our eye off Iran”, he said.

But it is what Cantor said next that is the real worry for the world: “And that's why Congress will soon pass the bipartisan Iran Threat Reduction Act, making it official U.S. policy to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability”.

Note what Cantor has said; “…acquiring nuclear weapons capability”. Not ‘nuclear weapons’ but ‘nuclear weapons capability’. This wording is crucial in understanding what is at stake.

The latest proposed Iran Threat Reduction Act gives the appearance of just being a way of tightening sanctions against Iran; however, it does not exclude pre-emptive military action if the US is not satisfied that sanctions are not having the desired effect of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability.

The word ‘capability’ has been used before in this same context in previous Iran related Acts but what Cantor has done is given it renewed emphasis by mentioning it to AIPAC. By bringing it to the public’s attention via the media in this way, Zionists can point to it as a casus belli for military action against Iran at any time Israel and/or the US decide they have enough justification. Justification might come via a manipulated or provoked event which Iran or its proxies Hezbollah or Hamas could be held responsible for. Israel is now looking for a way out. Provocation is a weapon Israel is adept at using; and it will no doubt be using it again soon.

Expect to hear with renewed vigour much more about Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons program’.

Monday, May 23, 2011

At his speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention yesterday President Obama made it abundantly clear that, if ever push comes to shove between the Arabs and Israel, the US will always support Israel no matter what.

The ‘disagreements’ between Obama and Netanyahu over ‘borders’ seem in retrospect to be a put-on show; a political sham. Obama knew all along that Netanyahu would never accept the 1967 borders as even a starter for talks.

If Zionist Israel decides it needs to go to war, then the US will be there to help Israel regardless of the nature of such a war.

Despite all the rhetoric from Obama, the US is still sending, and will continue to send, all the military aid Israel needs to ‘defend’ it self. He told his audience:

…I was reminded of the existential fear of Israelis when a modern dictator seeks nuclear weapons and threatens to wipe Israel off the face of the map -- face of the Earth.

Because we understand the challenges Israel faces, I and my administration have made the security of Israel a priority. It’s why we’ve increased cooperation between our militaries to unprecedented levels. It’s why we’re making our most advanced technologies available to our Israeli allies. It’s why, despite tough fiscal times, we’ve increased foreign military financing to record levels. And that includes additional support –- beyond regular military aid -– for the Iron Dome anti-rocket system. A powerful example of American-Israeli cooperation -- a powerful example of American-Israeli cooperation which has already intercepted rockets from Gaza and helped saved Israeli lives. So make no mistake, we will maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge.

Obama knows that the Palestinians will never agree to Israeli demands over borders and will never abandon the right of return of the refugees to their homes in what is now called Israel. Obama also knows full well that Netanyahu and the Zionists of Israel have absolutely no intention of ever allowing a Palestinian state of any kind to exist. In other words; both are just playing for time, a time when the right circumstances arise when Israel will have an excuse to begin a war against the Arabs that will lead to the final confrontation with Iran. This, in turn, will allow Israel, once and for all, to fully occupy all the lands it has thus far coveted including the West Bank, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and south Lebanon up to the Latani River.

All they are waiting for is the right moment to arise that will provide them with a casus belli to strike. They will then quickly find reason to escalate in order to induce a full confrontation.

The world should not be fooled by Obama’s apparent desire to find peace between Israel and the Palestinians; he knows it will never happen. All they are waiting for is the right moment.

Friday, May 20, 2011

For the Palestinians, efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure. Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won't create an independent state. Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection. And Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist.

With this, Obama makes it abundantly clear that he will veto any attempt by the Palestinians to ask the United Nations to recognise a unilaterally declared independent state of Palestine. Obama also makes it clear that Hamas’ involvement in the so-called ‘peace process’ is not welcome unless Hamas gives up its ability and right to defend itself against Israeli aggression and recognises Israel as a Jewish state. Since Obama well knows that that is simply not going to happen, it must be assumed that Obama has no intention of ever allowing a Palestinian sovereign state to exist despite the rhetoric. All of Obama’s conditions to be met are impossible for the Palestinians – and he knows it.

So now, it’s simply back more of the same – lots of talk but nothing at all ever happening.

The Palestinians now have no option but to take their case to the United Nations and ask that the world recognise a Palestinian state based on complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank back to the 1967 line, including from all of the settlements, the Jordan Valley and from East Jerusalem which would be accepted as the Palestinian capital.

The world now needs to support the creation and recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations – with or without US support and with total disregard to Israeli Zionist demands as to what form the new Palestinian state takes. The only item on the agenda for negotiation between the state of Israel and the new state of Palestine is the return of the refugees to their homelands in those parts of Palestine that are now called Israel.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

A quick observation for today; in the New York Times today there’s this:

The economic aid package that Mr. Obama will talk about on Thursday is meant to show democracy protesters, and Arab governments, that the United States stands behind the democracy movement and will reward governments that make reforms. Administration officials announced $1 billion in loan guarantees to Egypt, and $1 billion in debt swaps, along with trade and economic development proposals. Administration officials said an unspecified amount would be channelled to economic development help in Tunisia.

Reward governments that make reforms??!!

How arrogant can you get?

They’re going to borrow money from the Chinese – money that the American people are eventually going to have to pay back – and give it to the Egyptians and Tunisians as a reward.

The problem with the article is that it’s now too late for Netanyahu to actually be able to do anything to stop there being a Palestinian state that has been ‘negotiated’ with Israel. Let’s take a look at Tobin’s article to see why.

Tobin writes:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the Knesset today, in which he outlined his conditions for a peace pact with the Palestinians, is already being interpreted as being to “hawkish” to create the proper atmosphere for peace. That’s the word the ‘New York Times’ Ethan Bronner used to describe a speech in which the Israeli leader made it clear that Israel is prepared to give up almost all of the West Bank and recognize a Palestinian state.

Surely it must be obvious to Netanyahu and his neocon supporters in the US and elsewhere that the Palestinians are not interested in ‘conditions for a peace pact’ with Zionist Israel because they know that it will never happen; it is not part of Zionist policy. And besides, the Palestinians want a state of their own, not a ‘peace pact’. It is the reason why the Palestinian people, as represented by the Hamas and Fatah factions, have united and decided to look to the UN for recognition of a state that is unilaterally declared without further ‘negotiations’ with Israel that have always proved futile in the past. Israel does not want to give up their settlements and Israel will not allow the refugees to return to their homelands. Neither side are going to budge on this. The difference now, however, is that Israel’s position has now eroded to the point where Palestinians assuredly have the ultimate moral high ground. This brings us to the second point which is, of course, the fact that none of the West Bank is Israel’s to ‘give up’ in the first place. They might occupy it but they don’t own it.

Tobin goes on to write:

For years, Israel’s critics have chanted that its government had to give up the dream of a “greater Israel.” But now that even the leader of the supposedly hard right-wing Likud has stated that all Israel wants is to retain control of its capital Jerusalem and the major settlement blocs (which take up a tiny portion of the West Bank and which President Bush agreed in 2004 will remain part of Israel), this is still too “hawkish” a position for the Palestinians to be expected to return to the negotiating table.

‘Supposedly hard right-wing Likud’? There’s nothing ‘supposed’ about it at all. The Likud party was founded on a policy that dedicated itself to the founding of a Zionist Greater Israel based on expansionism and annexation into areas of Palestine that were not part of any originally mandated plan for a nation of Israel.

The settlement blocks are hardly a ‘tiny portion’ of the West Bank; they are sprawled all over various hillsides across the West Bank and are connected to each other via highways that ordinary Palestinians are not allowed to use. Massive tracts of buffer zones are also part of the settlements that have illegally been built on Palestinian lands.

And what has George W. Bush got to do with it? Bush had no power or mandate from the Palestinian people to agree what should or shouldn’t remain part of Israel.

Tobin continues with:

Indeed, as Bronner noted, Netanyahu’s program for peace included items that no Palestinian leader has ever stated a willingness to accept. These include: recognition of Israel as the home of the Jewish people; a peace agreement that spells the end of the conflict; and acceptance of the unalterable political fact that the descendants of the 1948 Palestinian Arab refugees must be resettled inside a Palestinian state and not on Israel’s territory. But if, as the Palestinians and many in the cheering section abroad insist, Israel must concede every inch of disputed territory even before peace talks begin, and the Palestinians will not give up the right of return or recognize the legitimacy of Israel’s existence even in the context of peace, then what could Netanyahu possibly do that would make him seem any less “hawkish” to his legion of critics?

While the Zionists of Israel live on and continue to covet the lands of the Palestinian people, why on earth should the Palestinians recognise these places as ‘Israel’ the home of the Jewish people? They are on lands stolen from Palestinians; recognition of ‘Israel’ as the home of the Jewish people would mean giving away their claim to lands stolen from them. The Palestinian people are not likely to do that.

The biggest issue of all, of course, is the question of the right of return of the refugees and their descendants.

Some Palestinian leaders themselves urged the Palestinians to vacate the land in order to make it easier for the Arab armies to fight for the destruction of Israel.

Palestinian leaders did indeed advise Palestinian civilians to leave certain areas temporarily in order to allow Arab armies to defend against Israeli expansionism but it was Israel that eventually displaced these people into places they didn’t want to be outside of what is now claimed to be Israel. The Palestinian people either fled before a murderous Jewish army intent of cleansing Palestine of Arabs or moved aside in order to allow the Arab defenders to fight the Israelis; they certainly didn’t exile themselves voluntarily in order for the Jewish armies to create an Israel at their expense as some Zionist historians, politicians and commentators often imply.

The reality is that Netanyahu and his Zionist and neoconservative supporters have no intention of ever allowing a Palestinian state to exist. Netanyahu’s problem now is how to create a crisis situation that will dwarf his predicament and allow him to crush all Palestinian aspirations of statehood. War against Hamas and Hezbollah is now his only way out of his predicament – and war against Hamas and Hezbollah can only mean a confrontation against Iran. The alternative is a unilateral declaration of independence coupled with UN recognition that will leave Israel isolated and without any hope of ever realising the Zionist dream of a Greater Israel. The only answer now is for there to be one state that includes Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip where both Jews and Arabs have equal rights and are free to move and live wherever they please.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

The Zionists of Israel are deeply concerned. For every day that goes by, Israel loses hope of ever realizing its dream of any form of a Greater Israel. Even the likelihood of hanging on to the settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem looks set to vanish if the Palestinian people get the support of the world community via the United Nations next September.

Netanyahu is no longer in a position to make any demands about the nature of a future Palestinian sovereign state. The true face of Zionism has been exposed. The world no longer supports an expansionist and racist Israel that dominates and dictates the form a future Palestinian state should take.

The internet has exposed Zionist Israel’s true face. The world has seen how Israel really behaves as it commits crimes against the Palestinian people and then blames them for having brought it upon themselves. They have behaved like the bullying husband who beats his wife because she stands up for herself and whose husband then says; ‘now see what you’ve made do!’ There was a time when the world accepted it and supported Israel on the basis that the Palestinians deserved what the Israelis meted out to them because the world could only see the story from Israel’s point of view. But after the attacks against the Gaza in 2006 and then against Lebanon when the world witnessed the indiscriminate bombing of thousands of civilians by Israel aircraft and artillery, the world became stunned at the reality of Israel’s brutality. Then there was Operation Cast Lead in 2008/2009 when, again, Israel indiscriminately bombed the Gaza Strip killing more than a thousand civilians and wounding thousands more as well as destroying much of the Gaza’s infrastructure. Then in May 2010 Israel really showed the world what criminals they were when their armed commandos boarded a civilian ship in international waters and murdered nine people who were defending their ship against the boarders. And now their latest crime has been exposed as they attempt to stop a demonstration from spilling across borders by opening fire with deadly weapons directly into the demonstrators killing some twenty unarmed civilians who could easily have been contained using non-lethal methods.

Zionism’s credibility, if ever it really had any, is fast disappearing and along with it goes any chance of the international community having any likelihood of not supporting the Palestinians request for it to be recognised in its own right and in its entirety to the 1967 borders and including all of the Israeli settlement, including the Jordan Valley and including the right to militarise to defend itself against future Israel aggression. Why should Palestinians ‘negotiate’ with Israel when the world can see that all that Israel has left to ‘negotiate’ with is brute force; a brute force that will no longer be acceptable to the international community. It is no longer in a position to dictate terms to the Palestinians.

It is getting to the stage where the US, a vetoing power in the UN Security Council (UNSC), that in the past has always supported Israel, may in the present circumstances be obliged to at least abstain or possibly vote for the recognition of a unilaterally declared Palestinian state. Even in the event of the US vetoing such a move at the Security Council, there are still mechanisms within the UN system that can bypass a vetoed resolution. With enough support in the UN General Assembly (UNGA), Palestine could get its way by invoking UN Resolution 377(v), the “Uniting for Peace” resolution, which empowers the UNGA under special circumstances to over-ride a UNSC vetoed resolution.

An internationally recognised unilaterally declared Palestinian state will ultimately spell the end of Israel as a state as we know it today. It could well be the first step towards what is ultimately the only viable solution to the crisis and that is to create a single state where Jews and Arabs live together as equals in freedom.

Netanyahu is getting desperate. He needs a way out – and therein lies the real danger for the world!

Sunday, May 15, 2011

The main drawback to spinning an intricate yarn designed to be presented to the entire world as fact is that sooner or later the story will unravel, and the more intricate the yarn then the more likely it is to come apart sooner rather than later.

The biggest problem with the story the US has told the world about the ‘death’ of Osama bin Laden two weeks ago is that it is totally devoid of any evidence whatsoever that supports any of their claims. This is compounded by the very confusing and often contradicting details that surround the story.

In the latest embellishments to the story we are told by some anonymous ‘US official’ that a stash of pornography was found at the location of bin Laden’s ‘death’. Nothing at all was presented to support the allegation; we are simply told that it was so and are therefore expected to believe it. No sooner was this allegation made when it was quickly followed by a series of others. It was ‘revealed’ that Osama bin Laden was obsessed with hatred for President Obama because, so we are led to believe, bin Laden thought that Obama had betrayed Islam and that he should be assassinated. It didn’t occur to the purveyor of these allegations, the ever-present but anonymous ‘official spokesperson’, that a person so religiously imbued that he is driven to such hatred is unlikely to be the same person to have horded a stash of pornography.

The very latest allegation, that, according to ‘documents’ found at bin Laden’s lair, the UK was to be targeted for terrorist attacks, comes hot on the heels of UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s announcement of his determination to begin British troop withdrawals telling his defence people he wants to start withdrawals as soon as this summer.

My earlier posts document many of the other inconsistencies in the story of the ‘death’ of bin Laden but the common denominator to all of what we have been told is that there is not one single shred of any independently verifiable evidence to support any aspect of the entire story from beginning to end. But the biggest flaw in the entire story is why they failed to bring in alive and instead destroyed the biggest haul of human intelligence they could ever possibly have hoped to imagine in their so-called war against terrorism and al Qaeda – unless, of course, they knew that he was already long dead and that this ‘death’ had some other more useful purpose.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Western leaders have for some time taken it upon themselves to extra-judicially murder their enemies’ leaders. Israel has a well-known targeted assassination policy. In most cases it quite openly announces that it is responsible for the targeted killing of their enemies’ leaders particularly when the killing occurs in their enemy’s territory. Just one example of this was the killing of the 67-year old blind and wheelchair bound spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, who was murdered by the Israelis in March 2004. At other times, usually when the killing takes place in a third country, the killing is undertaken covertly and is usually not admitted to. An example in this case was the killing of another Hamas leader, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was killed by being drugged and electrocuted in his hotel room in Dubai in January 2010 by people who Dubai police say was Israeli Mossad agents.

Since the so-called ‘killing’ of Osama bin Laden less than two weeks ago, the Israeli Zionists allies in the US, the neoconservatives, have attempted to legitimise such killings arguing such killings are justified since the death of a non-combatant leader may well prevent the deaths of innocent people or the deaths of ones own combatants. However, if that is the case, then there seems to be no reason at all why such an argument cannot be used by either side. Why, for example, should Jihadists not kill senior US or Western military personnel or even political leaders in order to, say, put an end to the operation of US terror drones that kill many innocent people throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. Why would it not, by the exact same argument that the neocons use, be legitimate for a covert Jihadist assassination group operating in the US to murder by bombing a CIA drone operator who lives with his wife and family in Washington, DC? And would it not be legitimate, however unfortunate, that the drone operators family also happened to die in the resultant explosion as often happens when either the US or Israel carry out a targeted killing?

Why is the world blind to see where all this is going? Killing will become a free-for-all and who knows who might then become ‘legitimate targets’.

Does the world really want to go to a place where any nation who feels self-righteous enough can simply murder his enemy by virtue of their own ideological legitimacy? Where will it end?

Thursday, May 12, 2011

News media, as we know, merely report what is told to them but all too easily those reports somehow morph into indisputable facts in the public’s generally un-enquiring mind. And from there, if we are not careful, those reports can pass into history as being an accepted fact even if the story is untrue.

Osama bin Laden kept pressing followers to find new ways to strike at the US while he was in hiding and his terror organisation was becoming battered and fragmented, officials have said, citing his private journal and other documents recovered in last week's raid.

The worrying aspect of this is the almost unnoticed part that runs; ‘officials have said’. In other words, the entire article is based not on what the writers of the article have seen with their own eyes but on what some anonymous officials have told them. What’s disturbing is how the reporters failed to clarify the officials’ statements by demanding to sight and read for themselves the private journals and documents that the ‘officials’ refer to. In most courts of law statements by officials like this would not be acceptable as ‘evidence’ because it would be regarded as ‘hearsay’. It’s not actual evidence; it’s simply a story told by somebody which may or may not be true.

For the historian, the word of an anonymous ‘official’ without evidence to support such a statement would simply not be acceptable as becoming a part of the record of the annals of time. Yet it is likely to become a part of recorded history simply because it was published by a well-known mainstream newspaper whose tens of thousands of readers have either not got the time to check the facts behind the story or who are of a disposition to either reject or accept unequivocally the veracity of the story. Either way, the facts of the story remain unsubstantiated. It is then possible that at sometime in the future the story could be dug up by some research historian taking a look at our era who will then use the story to substantiate some academic thesis which then also passes in to the annals of time and becomes part of history.

The real historical value in this instance is not so much in whether or not bin Laden pressed his followers to find new ways of striking the US but, if it is found that there is no such ‘journal’ or ‘documents’ – and so far there is no hard evidence to say there is other than the officials’ word – and the officials lied, then why did they lie?

The world needs to rely more on real evidence rather than simply the statements of government officials reported in the media all of whom have an appalling record of telling us the most outrageous porkies. Historians cannot allow these stories to become part of the future historical narrative of our times. The reality of ‘facts’ may be unpalatable to the readers of today’s news and not suit the purposes of today’s politicians but ‘facts’ are never unpalatable to the historian; they are a necessity.

Sunday, May 08, 2011

Osama bin Laden was never really ever a threat to Israel. Neither Hamas nor Hezbollah were inspired by the bin Laden myth. Dead or alive, bin Laden’s influence never affected the functioning or running of these organizations. Both would have existed even if bin Laden never did. For the Zionists of Israel, bin Laden served a far broader purpose. He was someone who 9/11 could be blamed on. He was made into a symbol of Western hatred toward Islam. He was a useful strawman for all the world’s woes. But he’d served his purpose and his official demise will usher in a new enemy.

For the Zionists of Israel and their Western allies, al Qaeda still exists as a useful enemy. Despite having killed off ObL the symbol, they still have al Qaeda the ‘terrorists’ to point the finger at whenever they need to stir up the masses with an explosion somewhere on the planet. But for the Zionists of Israel the new top enemy isn’t al Qaeda’s number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri who has been strongly tipped to take over the leadership role; no, the new top enemy for Zionist Israel is someone now far more useful as an enemy than ObL and al Qaeda ever was.

Ever since the Iranian people threw out the fascist Shah, the Iranian revolutionary theocracy has been a thorn in the side of both Israel and the US. In recent years the object of Israel’s hatred has been centered on Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But the problem with directing ones hatred at Ahmadinejad is the fact that he’s not really the top man in Iran and could be replaced at anytime if the Ayatollahs so chose or if there were an election that chose another President.

Ahmadinejad has been a convenient object of Zionist hatred mainly because of the inflammatory remarks he has made about Israel which they were able to manipulate so that they play into the Zionists hands for propaganda purposes. Lately, however, Ahmadinejad has been getting a hard time from the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, over Ahmadinejad’s sacking of his Intelligence Minister who happened to be a close associate of the Ayatollah. It now seems that this bit of internal strife is coming to a head and that Ahmadinejad may be on the way out. As a result of the leadership crisis in Iran, Netanyahu has hedged his bets and now proclaimed that, with Osama bin Laden no out of the picture, the biggest threat to Israel is not so much Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, but the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who Netanyahu says is ‘infused with fanaticism’.

And with this Netanyahu ushers in the world’s new figure of hate to demonise.

We’ll be hearing more and more about the Ayatollah in the future as the Zionists of Israel and their neoconservative allies in the US and around the world ratchet up the propaganda that they hope will lead to a final confrontation with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Saturday, May 07, 2011

The latest host of warnings about revenge attacks by Islamists have hit the headlines across the world. But where do these warnings come from and what purpose do they serve? The events lately, if they weren’t so serious in potential consequences, are bordering on farcical and should be treated with the contempt it deserves.

Less than a week after the announcement of the ‘death’ of Osama bin Laden, a man who most of the world knows has been dead for years, the Americans are now warning the world of the potential for a huge, or a series of, ‘terrorist’ events in revenge for his ‘death’. These ‘warnings’, so we are told, come via a ‘Jihadist website’ and which, according to White House spokesman Jay Carney reinforcing the original storyline, also confirms, very conveniently, “the obvious which is that Osama bin Laden was killed on Sunday night by US forces”.

This story about the threat of revenge attacks is in most major newspapers around the world although none that I’ve read have been able to link to the so-called ‘Jihadist website’. The New York Times is able only to say that the Jihadist warnings and confirmation of bin Laden’s ‘death’ came via a ‘Jihadist’ site monitoring company called SITE Intelligence Group but, again, no link to the actual ‘Jihadist’ website or even the name of it. Adding to the already well stretched credibility of this rapidly developing farce is the fact that the SITE Intelligence Group is run by notorious Israeli-American neoconservative propagandist Rita Katz, well known for her connections to Mossad and the procurement and dissemination of false Osama bin Laden tapes in the past.

In the past, these warnings have amounted to nothing and were clearly designed only to perpetuate the myth of Osama bin Laden and the notion of the ‘Islamist’ as terrorist. This, in turn, justified the continued ‘War against Terror’ that has raged ever since 9/11.

The ‘death’ of Osama bin Laden has clearly been designed to symbolise the end of an era. But, as when all eras end, another is ushered in.

For the West, the ‘War against Terror’ is by no means over. None of its real objectives, despite the humungous loss of life and the constant propaganda about how well the ‘war’ is going, has been reached. Israel still has not realised its dream of creating a Greater Israel – and it hasn’t been for the lack of trying – and the resources of the Middle East and Central Asia are still far from being in the hegemonic hands of the US and their Western allies. Nor, too, have any of their stated aims been accomplished; destroying al Qaeda and their Jihadist allies, or freeing the world of the ‘nuclear threat’ or bringing ‘democracy’ to everyone who hasn’t got it yet. None of either the stated aims or real aims has yet been achieved. Indeed, far from being a ‘safer’ place, the world is in more of a mess today than ever it was since 9/11.

Despite the US and their allies saying they are making progress in Afghanistan, the reality is that they have, after almost ten years of war, reached a stalemate. And, in Iraq, bombs are still going off and the Shia majority government there are slowly heading toward the Iranian sphere of influence. In Israel, despite the best efforts of the Israelis and their Western allies to keep them apart, Hamas and Fatah have reconciled and threatened to ask the UN to recognise Palestine as a sovereign state that precludes the Israeli settlements in the West Bank. To the north of the Israelis, Hezbollah still remains a hindrance to Israeli expansionism into the south of Lebanon for access to the waters of the Litani River. Iran continues to supply increasingly sophisticated weapons to both Hamas and Hezbollah for use in defending themselves from Israel. The prospect of Islamic influence in the new governments that are likely to emerge in both Egypt and possibly Syria, and, indeed, throughout the Middle East and North Africa, is also clearly a perceived threat to Israel’s security. Egypt’s opening up of the border with Gaza is also a perceived threat to Israel.

All in all, nothing at all has been achieved by the ‘War against Terror’. A new era needed to be ushered in with who knows what being planned to bring on the new era.

George W. Bush and the neocons ushered in the mess the world now finds itself in; the neocons can be relied upon to continue their warmongering propaganda and Obama, despite all that the neocons say about him, can be relied upon to usher in the new era with all the horrors that that is likely to bring.

Friday, May 06, 2011

Further to my post last Wednesday about targeted assassinations, it seems that the neoconservatives make no bones about the Americans appointing themselves to, as Victor Davis Hanson says, “routinely act as judge, jury and executioner of suspected terrorists”. Extra-judicially murdering people doesn’t seem to be a problem for people like Hanson and other neoconservatives like Charles Krauthammer.

These people have no qualms about killing their enemies in this way. Justice is not a consideration for them; it’s merely an excuse to justify continued unfettered killing of their enemies. As one reads their nonsense as they attempt to convince everyone else that targeted killings are an acceptable practice, what emerges from their words is an overwhelming sense of their absolute self-righteousness. To kill their enemy is, to them, a god-given right that can’t be given to anyone else. If their enemies started to assassinate American or Israeli senior political and military leaders off the battlefield we would never hear the end of it; but, apparently, it’s OK for them to do it their enemies.

The world should show nothing but contempt for those that have only contempt for the rule of law and the concepts of justice.

This means, of course, that, if the security cabinet didn’t see it, then nor will the rest of the world ever get to see it.

How convenient.

Despite all the hype from the President down, there is actually not one single shred of any independently verifiable evidence that proves that Osama bin Laden was killed on Sunday, 1 May 2011 as claimed by the President. Not one single shred. None.

This is turning out to be one of the biggest propaganda stunts of all time – apart, that is, from 9/11.

Wednesday, May 04, 2011

The world has now reached a position where state-sanctioned targeted assassination has become the norm for dealing with enemies and others that offend them. Gone, it seems, is the necessity for International Criminal Courts and the like as nation-states take the law into their own hands.

Government officials and functionaries have now become judges, juries and executioners who have taken it upon themselves to bypass national and international laws and ignore the fundamental principles of justice which are the cornerstone of civilized and moral society. Governments have now succumbed to resorting to acts of savage revenge and have thrown justice and the rule of law to the wind. They have lowered themselves to the standards of those they accuse of being without morals.

Both Israel and the United States, two nations that profess to be the beacons of democracy and justice, now use targeted assassination as a tool to fulfill both their military and political objectives. Since the ‘death’ of Osama bin Laden last Monday, the lust for blood by targeted assassination has reached boiling point.

Terror drones are already ranging the skies over Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. In Afghanistan and Pakistan they are being used to kill targets without consideration to the civilians they kill in the process. It’s not hard to imagine the next step for the Israelis and the Americans to take. Israel has already used targeted assassinations against political enemies as well as military targets. How long will it be before the US begins to use targeted assassinations against their political enemies at home or elsewhere in the West?

With photo enhancing and photoshop technology advanced as it is today, any photos of Osama bin Laden’s ‘dead’ body, on its own, cannot be proof positive of his death. Already during the course of this fraud we have seen how fake photos have been used in an attempt to prove that bin Laden really is dead.

The only reliable confirmation of death can come from an independently carried out post mortem with several eminent international suitably qualified persons on hand to witness the proceedings. This, of course, has been deliberately rendered impossible since his ‘body’, or at least somebody’s body, has, we have been told, been buried at sea.

No amount of photos or films that are produced by the US government will ever be proof positive that Osama bin Laden was killed in the way described by President Obama and his administration.

The ‘death’ of Osama bin Laden has been an elaborate hoax devised to end one era and usher in another. What that is likely to be we will no doubt know soon enough

The initial story had bin Laden armed and ready to fight. Now it turns out he was unarmed. The initial story said that he had used his wife as a ‘human shield’ and that she was killed as a result. Now it turns out that she wasn’t killed but captured. The initial stories were put out by chief US counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan.

One needs to ask; how could he have got it so wrong?

Yesterday, pictures were released of Obama and his security cabinet supposedly watching the assassination of bin Laden via live feed and as it happened. John Brennan was there – he’s standing behind Hilary Clinton in a white open necked shirt – purportedly watching the assassination, so how could he have got it so wrong if he’d have seen it happen?

If the story was true, the video would have been played and replayed hundreds of times and they would have got their story straight before going public with it.

No doubt, just as soon as Dreamworks has finished the final editing of this fairy story, we’ll be able to see exactly how Brennan got it so wrong.

Tuesday, May 03, 2011

THE ‘DEMOCRACY FASCISTS’ OF THE WEST VERSUS THE ‘TOTALITARIAN FASCISTS’ OF NORTH AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST AND HOW THE ‘DEATH’ OF OSAMA BIN LADEN FITS IN.

If it was not for the fact that a lot of innocent people are dying, it would almost be a laughable situation. What we are witnessing is one bunch of fascists pretending to have the best interests of ‘the people’ at heart – let’s call them ‘democracy fascists’ – using the genuine desire of the ordinary people of North Africa and the Middle East to be able to determine their own future as an excuse to rid Israel of all of its enemies by going to war against the dictators – let’s call them ‘totalitarian fascists’ – of the Arab world. Put simply, it’s fascists versus fascists.

North Africa and the Middle East are full of tin-pot dictators of varying descriptions. They govern their respective nations through fear, intimidation, corruption and nepotism. Some, like Libya’s Gaddafi, literally are straight-out dictators while others, like King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia, have elevated themselves to royalty and rule by virtue of being an ‘absolute monarchy’. The rest fall somewhere in between.

The problem for the West, and, particularly, the neoconservatives in the West, is that they have painted themselves into a corner as far as this part of the world is concerned. All of the Arab and Islamic governments of North Africa and the Middle East had fallen into one of basically two categories; pro-US or anti-US. Those that fell into the pro-US camp were, or still are, supported by the US and, while they continued not to give Israel a hard time, they continued to be supported by the US. Those that were or are in the anti-US camp are not so much actually anti-US, but more anti-Israel and, as a result of being anti-Israel, are seen as being anti-US by default. These are the neocons enemies.

The problem for the neocons is this: Their rhetoric and propaganda revolves around the idealistic notion that Israel is a democratic state in the likeness of America and that all of Israel’s problems would go away if the anti-US and anti-Israel Middle Eastern states were democratic like Israel and the US and, once that is achieved, then everyone would be happy.

This, however, is indeed just rhetoric and propaganda.

The reality is far different.

The Zionists of Israel and their neoconservative supporters are interested in creating a Greater Israel state that will ultimately preclude the existence of a Palestinian state and which will dominate the Middle East region by virtue of it being the region’s sole nuclear power. Its close alliance with the US will allow the US to project hegemony to the resource-rich region; a resource that will be shared with a resourceless Israel.

Where the neoconservative plans fall apart is in their arrogance. They somehow believe that governments that are likely to replace the autocratic and dictatorial governments that Arabs have and are currently revolting against, will somehow suddenly become pro-Israel once the dictators have been kicked out of power.

The neoconservatives’ rhetoric about ‘democracy’ has been their own undoing. Initially the rhetoric was used as part of their propaganda when referring to the states that are, or were, anti-Israel and anti-US; particularly Iraq, Iran and Syria. The ‘bringing democracy to Iraq’ propaganda was used extensively in the lead up to and aftermath of the destruction of Iraq by the US and its allies. The same propaganda was then intensified when the neocons turned their attention on Iran to crank up public opinion to support a war against them.

When the people of Tunisia revolted against their rulers, the neoconservatives hailed this as another victory for ‘democracy’. But when the Arab Spring revolt spread into Egypt the neocons were initially quiet about it. The reason for this was that Israel had a deal with Egypt’s leader, Hosni Mubarak, which kept the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in their place. But as the revolt looked like actually getting somewhere and it became obvious that Mubarak was not going to be able to quickly put the revolt down, the neocons had no choice but to support the call for democracy from the Egyptian revolutionaries despite it likely leading to a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government and also running contrary to the interests of Israel; a point which Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu at one point made very clear to the West.

The people of Libya have not enjoyed the same success as their neighbours in Tunisia and Egypt as they attempt to rid themselves of their dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. Again, the neocons have supported his removal by all means possible. They have called on President Obama to ignore the UN mandate that provides for protection of civilians and go all in to kill Gaddafi and to put US boots on the ground in order to ensure that only the ‘right’ government is formed to replace Gaddafi. So far Obama has resisted these calls and the war continues with neither side making much headway.

Now Syria looks like the next country to fall to the Arab Spring. This, on the surface, is not seemingly a problem for the neocons; Syria is their enemy. But, again, while the neocons want to be rid of Syria’s President Assad, the government that replaces him is likely to be even more anti-Israel than Assad’s government. The Muslim Brotherhood, which is pro-pro-Hamas and Hezbollah, is banned in Syria to the point where membership of the Muslim Brotherhood even attracts the death penalty. So, like in Egypt, the neocons will once again be hoisted by their own petard – it’s either ‘democracy’ or hypocrisy.

One has to wonder what the neocons expect to achieve with their seemingly self-destructive attitude. They have allowed their propaganda ideology to get the better of them so, one needs to ask, why have they?

As I have said, it is the dream of the neoconservatives, all of whom are either Zionists or support Zionism, to see that a Greater Israel is ultimately created. The only way a Greater Israel can ever be created is at the expense of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, which the Israelis already have, and – so they hope – south Lebanon up to the Litani River. None of these places have been or will be given up without a fight. The challenge for the Zionists is and has been how to start a fight without seeming as though they started it.

Israel’s two main direct hindrances to the Israelis dream of a Greater Israel are Hamas in the Gaza Strip and to a lesser extent also in the West Bank, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Both are supported by Syria and Iran. Iran is seen by Israel and their Western allies as by far the most important of their enemies because they are the main suppliers of weapons to both Arab organisations. However, what Israel and her allies need before they can attack Iran is a casus belli giving them a legitimate reason to attack them. Once war against Iran is under way then pre-emptive war against Hamas and Hezbollah can also get under way providing the opportunity for Israel to fully invade and occupy the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in order to defeat Hamas and also south Lebanon in order to destroy Hezbollah.

Getting the casus belli has always proved a problem for Israel. They’ve tried several times before to attack both but they have not been able to develop these attacks into a full scale confrontation with Iran even when they’ve had help from the George W. Bush administration. The recent ‘death’ of Osama bin Laden, however, and the potential for retaliation for his ‘death’ by Islamists from Hezbollah and Hamas may well prove to be the catalyst that provides the casus belli to bring on the confrontation they need.

I, as usual, hope that I’m wrong. Thankfully I have been so far but I fear that eventually it will happen unless a complacent world wakes up and demands that it doesn’t.

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that every single official word uttered and written about the so-called ‘death’ of Osama bin Laden reeks of lies and total fabrication.

The most significant factor in this very high-powered propaganda puff piece is the fact that the entire story is totally bereft of any evidence whatsoever. The fact that President Obama had been in on this blatantly obvious and transparent piece of propaganda has destroyed what little credibility he and the institution of America had left.

In a world where the internet and computer power reign supreme, lies and fabrications are quickly exposed. A photograph purporting to be the dead bin Laden quickly circulated the mainstream media shortly after the announcement of his ‘death’ only to be proven within less than an hour of it first appearing that it was fake and that it had appeared on the internet at least twice before; once on 29 April 2009 and then again on 8 December 2010.

Next the world was told that DNA testing had proved beyond doubt that it was indeed Osama bin Laden that had been killed. No evidence supporting the statement was given; not even a piece of paper testifying to the test was offered; there were no details on who conducted the test, nor were there any details on how the test was conducted, and nor was there any opportunity or facility offered for an independent test to be carried out to verify the claim.

The ‘DNA proves it’ claim was then quickly followed by news that bin Laden’s body had already very conveniently been disposed of at sea.

The entire sorry saga has been a strictly a ‘made in America’ affair. Not one of any of America’s allies has had any part whatsoever to do with Osama bin Laden’s so-called death.

All that President Obama has achieved, especially by being a part of this blatant attempt to deceive enemies and allies alike, is to demonstrate to the entire world that America has completely lost its way. The perpetration of this fraud shows that America has become a desperate and paranoid nation obsessed with the need to impress the world as America’s influence and power withers away.

Monday, May 02, 2011

With the US in the doldrums everywhere including at home, Obama and his advisors clearly thought now would be a really good time to bring great and humungous tidings to a hurting American people. A royal marriage seems to have worked for the recession hit British, why not the death of a make believe arch enemy for millions of ordinary American suffering the financial hardships derived – ironically – from the expense of the wars meant, so we were told, to have put an end to the actions of people like bin Laden.

The Western media circus will now play the news of bin Laden’s ‘death’ up to the hilt around the world. Ignored will be the evidence that bin Laden died years ago. Supporters of the bin Laden myth will argue that there was never any concrete evidence that bin Laden was dead ages ago but then nor will they be able to show any concrete independently verifiable evidence that he was killed in Islamabad yesterday despite the Americans saying they have his body.

It was convenient for the Western propaganda machine to keep bin Laden alive all these years since his death probably at the end of 2001, just as it is convenient for the Western propaganda machine to now announce his death.

His death, regardless of when it was, also happens to be convenient in terms of the world now never being able to hear his side of the story had he been captured and tried. Osama bin Laden denied having had anything to do with 9/11 and, since the US was already after his blood anyway, there was no reason at all for him to lie. A later video of a not very good look-alike claiming responsibility appeared and was presented as final proof that he had, indeed, confessed to being responsible for 9/11.

For years the US administration and the West have presented Osama bin Laden as the Emmanuel Goldstein of the Twenty First century in order to perpetuate their ‘War Against Terrorism’ which ended up being nothing more than a war against Islam and the Muslim world, so the big question now is; who will replace him as the object of hate for the West?

UPDATE

According to the LA Times, US officials have said that “DNA tests had confirmed bin Laden’s identity”. One wonders how a DNA test was completed so quickly since even when in a rush (despite what you see on ‘CSI Miami’) they take about 48 hours to do. And the other question is; with what are they comparing his DNA with?

From the spontaneous revelers at the White House to the celebrants in Times Square, what the country is enjoying now is a sense of faith having delivered the goods. This stands in dramatic contrast to all the pessimism about the U.S.’s supposedly inevitable decline — and it’s as American as it gets.

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About Me

is an Aeronautical Engineer, Historian and general carer of what goes on in the world.
Apart from an earlier career in engineering, Lataan also has a First Class Honours BA degree in History and a PhD in International Politics.
All material on this site is available for use without permission but it would be appreciated if the source is acknowledged.